Kentucky Murders: A Small Town Murder Mystery (25 page)

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Kate walked down the hallway toward the community room. She looked through the glass door at Jimmy and
Sharnita
sitting at one of the small children’s tables at one side of the room. They had gathered a few toys from one of the shelves.

Janet sat across the room at the desk. She surfed the internet, paying little, if any attention to the children. Kate or another coworker must be in the room at all times when children were present. On the days they had no children guests, Jimmy would play on the couch in Kate’s office. Her boss had given her the nod when she asked if he could come to work with her. He would be starting kindergarten this coming year and paying for child care when she worked at a social services office equipped for children seemed like a waist. And the staff loved having Jimmy around.

Kate entered the room and walked up to the children. “It’s a beautiful day. You guys want to go outside?”

Jimmy sprung upright. “Yeah!” He turned to Sharnita. “They have swings and a slide, even a jungle gym!” He grabbed her hand and pulled her off the small chair.

“Let’s go.” She looked over at Janet and nodded.

They put on their jackets and went out the back door and into a fenced-in playground adjacent to the building. It was a cool fall day. Kate took a seat at a picnic table while the Jimmy ran toward the jungle gym. The girl followed after him.

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Donnie nudged Lee with his elbow. “It’s the sheriff’s wife and the kids.”

Lee looked across the street. Sure enough, Kate, her son, and the small black girl came out of the building and into the playground area. “Well, now we know for sure where she’s at. The question is how long will they keep her here?”

“Let’s freakin’ snatch the girl while we have the chance.”

“Not now, you idiot. Not in broad daylight, while I’m driving my truck, and with no plan. What are we going to do, grab all three of them? Do you think Kate would just let us take the girl? We need a plan.”

“A plan?
A freakin’ plan?
”

“Yeah, a plan. Maybe we’ll come back tonight and go in after dark.” He figured they had one night, maybe two, before some family member came to claim the kid. “Let’s go. I’ll call you later.”

Chapter 12

Zack moaned and rolled over in bed. His eyelids cracked open to reveal afternoon sunlight. How long had he been sleeping? Hadn’t he set the alarm to wake him up at … was it one? Turning, he looked at the clock radio showing it was 1:20. He could see he’d set the alarm for 1:30. He rolled to a sitting position and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger of one hand. “Damn,” he swore under his breath. He wanted to sleep for hours more but knew he couldn’t. He flipped off the alarm. As he headed to the bathroom the phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Sheriff, its Bell.”

“What’s up?”

“We got a call from an FBI agent. She said she’ll be here this afternoon at around 3:00.”

“Really?”

Had Bell said she? “Did she say anything else?”

“Just that she wanted to discuss the Rikers Road case with you.”

“Okay, I should be back there in about twenty minutes. See you then.”

After he relieved himself and brushed his teeth, he slid into the shower for one minute, more to wake himself up than to get clean.

Later, after getting dressed, he went outside and climbed into his car to head for the office. He had to remember to call Kate later.

As he turned the ignition key and started the Blazer, he thought about the farmhouse, about the bodies, about the girl, about the killers.  He wanted to spend more time going through the evidence before this FBI person showed up.

After a moment of hesitation, he backed out of the driveway and pulled off toward town.

While making the ten minute drive, he recalled the details of his first murder case. The couple at the house had appeared to have been executed, and then the killers had tried to make it look like a robbery, sort of. But the swastika didn’t fit that scenario. Maybe they weren’t trying to make it look like a robbery, but were just greedy hit men. Were they from the county, or outsiders? He found it hard to believe there might have been a contract killing in Michaeltown. Why this couple? How did the little girl fit into all this?

Zack was starting to feel overwhelmed again with all the questions he couldn’t answer. Those doubts of why he took this job would not go away. He felt that he wasn’t qualified for this responsibility. But then he also realized every cop had to experience his first murder case, shoot his first suspect, and make his first mistakes. Hopefully, he wouldn’t be making any mistakes on this case, and he’d heard that some cops never fired their weapon on the job in a whole career.

He pulled turned a corner and headed toward his new office.

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Kate looked up from the paperback novel she had brought along and realized how late it had gotten. Another mother with two small children had shown up at the office looking for help. She was divorced, out of work and didn’t know where else to turn. The new kids, one blond haired boy of about three and his older sister at about six, had joined Jimmy and Sharnita in the playground area. Their mother was inside filling out paperwork and Kate had assured her she would watch the kids.

The children had been playing for almost an hour and didn’t seem to be running out of energy yet. Kate enjoyed watching them more than the alternative stack of paperwork piled on her desk.

She watched Jimmy, her natural born leader, guiding Sharnita through the playground equipment, climb on the jungle gym, over to the slide, off the end, and to the swings. It was like watching tiny Army troops navigate an obstacle course for toddlers. Sharnita, expressionless, followed Jimmy’s every command. Jimmy kept talking the whole time. Maybe Jimmy was good therapy for the girl. She was scheduled to be seen by the staff psychologist in the morning.

Kate wondered if she and Zack would have another child. She thought of having a little girl and what that would be like. The thought of getting pregnant made her think of and the day they met …

She filled a glass pot with water, as she looked over at an attractive guy who had appeared without her noticing on one of the stools in the diner. “I’m sorry. When did you sneak in here?”

He said nothing. He appeared to not be able to speak. He only stared, with his mouth almost hanging open. His eyes moved across her face, then down her body. Usually she would have been insulted by getting the once over from a stranger, but somehow this guy’s stare didn’t bother her. In fact, she felt her face flush.

He finally took a deep breath and swallowed. He looked like he hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath.

She dumped the water into the grate at the top of the coffeemaker, slid the pot into the front of the machine, and handed him a menu. He nodded speechlessly, his eyes still fixed on her face. She turned to check the coffee, filled a glass with ice and water, and then slid the glass across the countertop to him.

Still, he kept his eyes on her. The spell finally broke, and he quickly looked down, realizing how long he’d been staring. His face flushed.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” she asked.

At first, she had tried to ignore the way she felt about the complete stranger she’d met while waitressing at the local diner that day that now seemed like a lifetime ago. She remembered the breath she’d missed when he’d shown up again the next day. She was glad he had come back for her. But she missed that lightheaded feeling of early love and the intimacy they had once shared that seemed to have faded somehow. She tried to remember what it felt like and longed to have that feeling again.

The children finally seemed to be running low on energy. An hour and a half of playing had taken sapped their energy. Kate escorted the four children back into the community room. She turned them over to a coworker and returned to her office to catch up on paperwork. What fun?

Chapter 13

Zack pulled into the parking lot at the County Police headquarters. The new building had been built with the flood of tax dollars that had come in from the new housing developments sprouting up around Michaeltown. The area had become a bedroom community for executives working in the big city.

He entered the building and went straight to his office. He sat at his desk and paused, taking in and exhaling a deep breath. It seemed like he’d never left the office and his short nap hadn’t made him feel rested.

So the FBI is calling already?
And it sounded like it was a woman by herself. Bell hadn’t said “them” or “agents.” She said an FBI agent. That was odd. Zack thought they always traveled in pairs. At least that’s what he’d seen in the movies. Well, this would make things interesting. He’d hardly gotten started on the investigation and
they
were coming, or
she
was coming. It must be the hate crime angle, he thought. He again felt a sense of inadequacy and lack of experience for this job. Now a professional who knew how to investigate a crime would come and possibly expose his weaknesses and embarrass him. He had to quit thinking so negatively. But it wasn’t easy.

Sitting, he opened the folder lying on his desk. Rachel had added a stack of crime scene photos to the thick pile of documents.

Zack slowly flipped through the pictures. First he saw the two victims sprawled out on a bloody background; then he saw the dark red swastika with streaks where blood had run down the wall. Zack thought of a horror movie scene. But this was real life and the blood wasn’t fake.

He saw pictures of the splintered door jam and the footprints found near the back corner of the house. Next he came across something new, at least to him. The picture showed tire tracks along the shoulder of the road. Rachel must have found these after he left the scene.

Now, all they needed were suspects to match the footprints and tire tracks.

One of his deputies knocked at the open door and entered the office with a document in his hand.

“Afternoon, Sheriff.”

“Hey Tom, what’s up?”

“We got more information on the victims. The husband was a lawyer. He used to be an assistant district attorney down in Lexington until about six months ago when he and the family moved up here and he joined a private firm. We contacted his office. They deal with business and family law, that kind of thing. The wife was also a lawyer. I talked with the DA’s office and looks like they met down there on the job. Doesn’t appear she was working up here yet.”

“Okay, sounds like the DA angle may lead to a motive. Have them pull his cases and come up with a list of convictions. Cross that list against any cons that’ve gotten out recently. We need to see if we find any connections.”

“Got it, Sheriff.” He left the office.

Zack continued to look through the evidence and made notes on what to do next.

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Lee headed for the school where his daughter would soon be getting out and walking home. He parked the truck a few blocks from the school along the route he knew his daughter would take. He reached into a small plastic cooler on the seat and removed a sandwich and a Coke. As he ate and waited, he thought about the other girl that he would be kidnapping soon. Even though his stomach growled in protest of the idea of planning the abduction of a child, his brain told him he had no choice. It was that girl or his daughter. And if he didn’t save his daughter from that evil woman, her mother, Jenny’s innocence would be stripped away and she would become like
her
. He had to act now. And if it meant that that other girl, a complete stranger to him, had to be taken and given to some freak who would pay for whatever sick reason he wanted her, then that’s what he had to do. He’d spent six long years in a jail cell thinking about being with his child.

He looked down at his watch. 1:49. He hadn’t realized how early it still was. She wouldn’t be coming along for almost an hour. He sighed and realized that because he was so shook up he had lost track of time. He wanted to get this over with so badly.

Now he would wait and think of a plan. They probably should have done something right away to get the girl, but Lee couldn’t think of a way to take her without getting caught or at least being identified and caught later. As long as she was with the Social Services and Kate, at least they knew her location for now. But Lee knew time was short. It would have to be tonight.

He had picked this street near this corner to meet his daughter because a huge six-foot high hedge blocked off the closest houses from the sidewalk. There was never much traffic this time of day. Jenny’s mother should never let her young daughter walk home alone more than half a mile. Hell, she was only eight. Lee would never put her in this vulnerable of a position once he got her away from here and they started their new life.

He got out of the truck and walked around to the sidewalk side. Leaning against the side of the truck, he waited.